Are the Oscars Irrelevant?

Earlier this morning, the nominations of the 84^th Annual Academy Awards have been announced. There were some surprising nominees and others those movie predictors anticipated this whole “awards season.” I had this lingering questions, are the Oscar relevant?

When the very first Oscars were handed out in 1929, Hollywood was in a much different mindset, with the film companies dictating what the actors, directors and writers to work with them. The Hayes Code system limited the creative process for many filmmakers that lead to different ways of innovation.

Fast forward to now; Hollywood studios are more concerned about pushing a mediocre product out than slowly nurturing a movie to the best quality possible.

As you may have known, I have decided not to watch any 2011 movies in the theater, because I felt that the quality of the movie have been subpar. It has been a growing trend ever since the writers’ strike in 2007. It was a belief that quality of the movies will suffer in 2009. It turned out to be true.

It seems to me that the trend is still happening, even though the strike is long over. There are movies that have you scratching your head. Really? This awful movie is being released. The actors have to go to these talk shows and promote a movie that they know is shit. All of this occurs because; the studios want to make their money back.

Now that awards season is down to the final stretch, it seems that people don’t care about going to the movies that much. The movies that have been nominated, the average person has not seen it, let alone heard of it.

There seems to a disconnected between the American public and the Oscars. The Oscars is for film critics only and movie fanatics. The average American is not going to care about who wins Best Documentary Short Subject or Best Sound Mixing. They don’t care.

The Academy tries to be hip last year with having younger hosts with Anne Hathaway and James Franco to boost ratings. That was a colossal failure. The problem is apathy. Who wants to watch people gets awards for mediocre performances in a mediocre movie that gets a lot of hype in the swing of things.

Let me pose a couple of questions to you. What was your number movie of last year? Was it nominated for an Oscar? If it was, would watch it again?

I have seen a lot of movies in the past twenty-five years. There are movies that I have seen hundreds of times and there are some movies that I have seen only once. You know that was, awards season. The movies that were hyped up to be the best Hollywood has to offer. Those movies should be lucky that I saw it at all.

The American public is sick and tired of being duped into going movies that are supposed to be great and are not.

There needs to be a serious revamp. The Academy is broken. Now, the Academy is a joke. It’s time to start cleaning house.